A hammer in every sewing kit.

dragonfly

Today I finished the Dragonfly Brooch I was working on a while ago. I would have finished it earlier but I put my back out last week while walking the dogs. Having spotted a rabbit, I ran them towards it for a look and fell over a stick. Well done, me. Would have been alright if either dog had then seen the rabbit, but they do have a habit of pretending they haven’t seen things they might be expected to do something about. Anyway, here are the wings in their finished state:

They sort of remind me of those macro photos you see of insects who’ve been covered with dew in the night. Sort of shiny and .. well beady I guess.

Cutting these out is something I do not like. I used to do a bit of shaped plastic canvas work and the cutting out part always made me a bit grumpy. I have not, it has to be said, done the finest job here, but it looks alright.

Here is a picture of the finished brooch in some ivy, because I am arty like that. You can see the not so great cutting out, I’m way paranoid I’ll go “Snip” and then find threads and beads scattered everywhere as I’ve cut through a vital part of cardboard. Also the middle section – eyes, head and body, are not strung quite tightly enough, however they are tight enough to hold shape which I suppose is the main thing.

Now I can move on to my secret project – oooOOOoooOOOOO- why secret? Present, it’s a present for someone. It’s exciting not only because I like to give presents, but because I’ll get to break out my latest eBay purchase, a set of delicious embroidery hoops.

Vintage embroidery hoops, thank you so much for asking. Sturdy, proper hoops. I do have a collection of new ones I’ve bought recently, but I tend to snap them. I guess I don’t know my own strength. Or they’re rubbish and cheap. These are lovely and strong with a nice smooth tightening screw on each of them. The smallest there is 3 inches. Exciting!

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On my last “crafty” blog (which turned into my everything else blog also, which may well happen here. Brace yourself for long, but well thought out, rants about people who litter from cars), I had a feature called “WIP Wednesday” where I would take some pics of whatever it was I was working on at the time and talk about them. I thought about doing it here, but to be honest I’m not much for schedules. Last time, most Thursday mornings involved me saying “Oh crap, I forgot”. So although today is Wednesday, and I am talking about a WIP, let’s not make it a date, okay?

Today’s WIP is the Dragonfly brooch kit I mentioned in my last post. I’ve not done any beaded embroidery before, beyond the occasional “sew three beads on here”. The actual forming of a picture with the beads is new to me. My first problem was sorting the beads. In theory I could have just dumped them all in a cup and picked out the colours as I needed them, but I thought it might be easier to sort them. I didn’t have anything to sort them into however (apart from teacups, which felt like overkill really). In the end, I came up with this:

These are those little silver cases that tealight candles come in. I happen to have a ton of tealight candles. They’re nice and wide for dipping the needle into to pick up the bead. You can see, if you look closely, the middle tray on the top row has two colours in it. These are so close in normal light that I couldn’t pick them apart, but inside the case they are generally spottable as different. Having said that, I can’t vouch 100% that the right colour bead has ended up in the right spots for those bits.

I’ve done all the beaded bits on the lower wings so far – the gaps will be filled with plain cross stitch in dark blue. At first I thought this was going to take forever, it feels a little slower than regular cross stitch due to fishing out a bead. Once I was in the swing of it though, it’s fine. Not as fiddly as I expected and very satisfying to see all the little beads nice and straight in their little rows.

Not sure how I’d go on a large piece though, probably I would go a little bit insane.

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How awesome am I to open a brand new blog and then cease to post after three entries? Pretty damn awesome! I have the most best excuses though, and they are two. The first is the heat, which as usual has sucked the creativity right out of my face via my more than ample nose. No matter how determined I am to do anything in a given day, it never happens if the temperature climbs too high. The house I’m in does have air-con, in a patchy sort of way, which is just not enough to overrule the Summer. The second excuse is that I reactivated my World of Warcraft account, fool that I am.

However! I come to you with news of a planned project. A knitting friend of mine on Plurk (hello Selana!) linked a nifty looking project – A “My Year in Temperatures” scarf. For those who can’t be bothered clicking, the basic idea is that you select colours to represent temperature ranges, and every day you add a row to your scarf of the relevant colour. Kris, the lady who owns the blog where the idea is, has chosen colours for a range of temperatures from -40°C to +30°C, however being as I am in Melbourne, I have been able to select a much smaller colour range as our seasonal highs and lows don’t cover such a wide spread. While I’m waiting for my yarn to arrive (I know the idea works best on scrap or left over balls, but I don’t have enough of a colour range as I tend to buy just red. Or sometimes brown), I am keeping track of the top temperatures and reminding myself to do so with a sticker on my monitor:

Eagle eyed guests, or those who do a lot of snail mailing, will note that is the border end of a strip of stamps. My top tip for today is using them for tiny reminder notes as they stick easily and peel off later. And yes I totally did watermark an image no one in their right mind would steal.

I think this project has captured my imagination for a couple of reasons. The first is simply timing – Selana linked to it a couple of days ago, while the years high temperatures were still easily available on the web. If it’d been June, I probably would have tucked it away and then forgotten about it. The other reason is that I love stripes, I think stripes are the most best awesome things (although polka dots are also terribly awesome). Finally, I like the idea of having a year long project that can’t be rushed. The yarn should be here soon, and then I’ll get the opening days done and be on my way! Huzzah!

In other crafty news, about a week ago I was thinking random thoughts about things unrelated to much and I suddenly remembered that the wooden chest under the window is no longer full of my mother’s eccentric hat collection – it’s full of Craft Stash!

On the top you can see a frog I did to check the colour palette of a piece of software I have since lost. Underneath that? All manner of kits, threads, patterns and other bits and bobs including a latch hook cushion front kit. Being as I’m on a bit of a stash bust this year (do pretend, now you’ve read that, that I didn’t mention buying yarn a paragraph ago. Thanks), I am diving in with this small, sweet kit:It’s beaded stitching done on a heavy cardboard backing instead of fabric, for use as a brooch. I have no recollection of buying it, but it does seem like something I’d buy…

So stay tuned, because there’s a cool change coming tomorrow and I might actually do something!